Van's Sigma 3 ideas and thoughts on game design

+ 2 custom oskills: Reverberating Effigy and Recoil
+ Started the QoL section

I would LOVE to see PVP brought back! I'm certain you'd see longer ladders as more players would try and 1-up the next. Lots of potential for new PVP challenges as well; pvp in front of 'X' boss, cannot leave your screen to qualify, must be a purify boss, and you cannot kill him, lol. Just some stupid ideas for challenges

I'd like to see corruption improved.
I really like this system itself, and credit the devs on its creation. I'm thankful for all they do

I just wish they'd either remove or improve the lower end bonuses. I realize power creep is a concern, but its gotten to a point where getting something worth having is a pipe dream. Since corruption became a thing, I've successfully corrupted probably 100-150 ish items. I got 1 +10% aa and 1 +1%absorb. I think i had maybe 2 other items give lesser bonuses, that were actually useful. 1 40 EWD on a physical build, and magic find once.

Its almost always a lesser bonus thats either totally useless, or useless to the build you are using. -5% vendor prices? Please. Or Ill get -10 enemy cold res on a fire build. Even when the item is sellable (because it works with a particular build), you wont get much for it because there isn't much competition for it.

Added to this, how many times will you get a specific endgame item you want to try corrupting? 3-5 in a season maybe? Of those, 2 might successfully corrupt, then its a 1% chance to be useful. It just feels a bit underwhelming, and unexciting is all.

Just some thoughts.

Newbking wrote:I'd like to see corruption improved.

Its almost always a lesser bonus thats either totally useless, or useless to the build you are using. -5% vendor prices? Please. Or Ill get -10 enemy cold res on a fire build. Even when the item is sellable (because it works with a particular build), you wont get much for it because there isn't much competition for it.

Added to this, how many times will you get a specific endgame item you want to try corrupting? 3-5 in a season maybe? Of those, 2 might successfully corrupt, then its a 1% chance to be useful. It just feels a bit underwhelming, and unexciting is all.

I agree, I feel like current corruption system would be fine if Median had 10 times larger playerbase - just statistically the community would generate much more items that got fitting corruptions (i.e. cold-related item getting cold pierce, physical-related item getting EWD etc)

I think the corruption numbers can be adjusted to fit the current playerbase better - with chances of good outcomes increased and brick chance reduced. And those can be reevaluated over time as playerbase changes.

Taem wrote:I would LOVE to see PVP brought back! I'm certain you'd see longer ladders as more players would try and 1-up the next. Lots of potential for new PVP challenges as well; pvp in front of 'X' boss, cannot leave your screen to qualify, must be a purify boss, and you cannot kill him, lol. Just some stupid ideas for challenges

Aye, PvP is one of the things that can increase seasonal longevity. It incentivizes people to
a. make more characters per season (some purely for PvE, some with endgame PvP in mind)
b. spend a bunch of time perfecting the gear + PvP often nudges you to make additional gear setups vs specific opponents
c. interact with each other more and have fun, which is a good healthy thing for any game to have

+ Some thoughts on Faerie Fire
+ 2 Meme uniques from April Fools Day
+ QoL and some minor edits

Regarding extending season longevity, perhaps consider introducing a Paragon Soul Stone-like charm, which players can transmute after reaching specific milestones. These milestones could be based on criteria such as the number of monsters killed, bosses defeated, hours spent in-game, etc., offering decent rewards. This could involve adding stats or modifiers to the charm itself, or providing additional items or unique modifiers.

While I also would like seasons to have more longevity, targeting that in itself as a goal seems like the kind of thing that risks unintentionally changing the game overall for the worse. If you primarily aim to make players play for longer, the easiest solution is some form of near infinite grind, which you can find in many other games, not even just RPGs, and which often feels :puke:

You can make players play longer by adding arbitrary roadblocks which take a while to get past or adding some highly RNG-dependent lottery into end-game-gearing, but if I already have finished all the content I want to do I almost never find the motivation to keep going because there is no hurdle I'm trying to get past any longer.

Personally, I feel like the best way to get more playtime out of people is real content, which is also the hardest and most time consuming to produce, and easy "cheat" solutions like unending grinds don't it for me unless there is some goal I'm trying to reach by pushing myself through them.

Im not sure what else can be done. This season was dead after 2 weeks.

Level gating everything sure doesnt do any favors for longevity anymore.

+ 3 Mastercrafted concepts that were born during 2.9 beta
+ Last Resort - SSU Short War Bow

+ Pragmatism - SSU Aspis
+ Gnarled Bow (Mastercrafted)
and 2 more concepts I forgot to add from 2.9 beta:
+ Cyclops - SSU Helm
+ Buzzbomb redesign/return in SSSU form